In high school, or at least in my sexually Republican high school, a guy trying to get in a girl’s pants was a lot like a guy trying to sign on to AOL during prime hours: You kept getting your access denied.

College, however, is an entirely different story with an entirely different server. With this comes an entirely different set of rules and trends, leading to phenomena such as the disappearance of the hickey.

Hickeys. In high school, we wore turtlenecks to hide hickeys from our parents; now we wear turtlenecks to hide them from our peers. Face it: Hickeys are embarrassing. They imply a lack of skill and a lack of originality. When my friend arrived home from a date with a hickey, we teased her for months. “What, are you dating a high schooler?” we asked. In that instance, she was — which kind of killed the joke, but still you get the point.

So what caused the disappearance of the hickey? The consensus seems to be that in college, we are granted more access to more parts than we were in high school.

Sleepovers. People tend to go a lot farther in college than they did in high school. Because such staple high school institutions as the hand job have disappeared, people go straight from kissing to sex — either the oral or the traditional kind — skipping the middle parts, the filling. And as both Oreo lovers and fiction writers know, the filling is often the most important part.

PDA. These initials make public displays of affection sound a lot like a U.S. government agency, but I’m glad to say that — excluding things like frat parties and bars — PDAs, like hickeys, generally have disappeared from public view. Perhaps it’s because when people yell out “get a room” in college, you actually can.

Kissing. It’s gotten better in college, but it simply doesn’t carry the weight it once did. Perhaps it’s because we’ve had so much practice in our years at Northwestern — first kissing up to our teachers and professors and now kissing the asses of potential employers.

In high school, my friends and I would sit for hours analyzing kissing techniques. Now most of my friends don’t even consider kissing to be really hooking up. It’s funny, too, that we no longer credit the French for this act. The last time I heard the phrase French kiss was in a really bad novel I read in seventh grade.

Hand-holding. In nursery school, everyone held hands. Now hand holding is a much more exclusive and intimate thing. Anyone can hook up, but hand-holding elevates things to a much more serious level.

Ambiguity. In high school, when we said “fuck you,” it was generally for a reason that had nothing to do with sex. Now when we say “fuck you,” it might be because we really want to. nyou

E-mail Medill senior and nyou writer Becky Meiser. Her birthday is on Sunday. she can be reached at [email protected]